This application relates to a relatively lightweight spinner for use in a gas turbine engine.
Gas turbines are known and, typically, include a fan rotor rotating with a plurality of fan blades. A spinner extends outwardly of the fan rotor to provide a portion of a nose cone.
The fan blades deliver air into a bypass duct as propulsion air and into a core engine.
Air in the core engine passes to a compressor where it is compressed and delivered into a combustion section. The air is mixed with fuel and ignited in the combustion section and products of this combustion pass downstream over turbine rotors driving them to rotate.
Historically, a fan drive turbine rotor rotated with the fan rotor at a single speed. However, it would be desirable to have the fan rotate at slower speeds than the turbine rotor. Thus, recently, a gear reduction has been placed between the fan drive turbine and the fan rotor.
With the use of the gear reduction, the size of the fan blades and rotor has increased dramatically. As the size of the fan rotor and blades increase, so does the size of the spinner. Further, as the size of these components has increased, the likelihood of contact from hail, birds, etc. has also increased. Thus, the spinner and the other components must withstand these impacts.
Historically, to make a spinner more resistant to impact, the thickness of the wall of the spinner has increased. This has resulted in undesirably high weight.